For My Son Ramiro's Birthday: Thoughts from Indigenous Imaginations

By Luis Rodriguez · June 17, 2014

17

June 2014

The following statement was written on the occasion of my oldest son Ramiro's birthday today, June 17, 2014. He turns 39. I drew on cosmological studies and my own interpretations of highly developed and complicated indigenous ideas, mostly Mexika (so-called Aztec) and Mayan. Ramiro is now a practitioner of Mexika Danza and Native American spirituality. I offer this not as a doctrine encased in stone, but to move ideas, the imagination -- a way to see that can help bring more clarity about nature's core laws and principles.The operating ratio of the earth:
13:20 is the base-operating ratio of the earth. There are actually 13 moons in a solar year, 13 strands in DNA, 13 levels of sky in so-called Meso-American cosmology, 20 months of the calendar, 20 fingers and toes… and on and on. This ratio helps attune human life to the timeship called earth. The ratio is also expressed as 13:260 (the 260 days of the Mexika Tonalpohualli calendar, which is also true for the key calendar of the Mayan, the Tzolkin). There are also 260 days in the gestation period of a human being in the womb, which comes to 13 months (not 9), 20 days per month. There are even more complicated mathematical links since math is the language of the universe.
260,000 years is also the end of the five 5,200-year cycles that marked the 2012 harmonic convergence. 52 years is also a life cycle in humans and in the Mexika cosmology, where every material possession would be discarded and a new fire would begin the next 52-year cycle for a city or tribe.
However, since the European invasion in 1492 (during the period of Christian consolidation of Spain and the Spanish Inquisition to ethnically-cleanse Spain of Moors and Jews) brought imbalance as well as humanly, earthly and spiritual poison to this land, the operating ratio has been 12:60 (12 months make a year, two 12-hour periods makes a day-and-night, 12 is a dozen, 60 minutes to an hour, etc.). Since then we’ve been out of tune, unaligned, in what is called the “Dark Dreamspell of History.”
This is also why there are 520 years from 1492 invasion to 2012. Conquest, colonization, diseases, wholesale theft of land and minerals, the rise and pinnacle of capitalism, and more mark this period. While tremendous growth in social structures, technology and instruments occurred during this time, we also saw the greatest destruction of people ever –- and the greatest destruction of land and resources, leading to global warming and beyond. Almost all 12:60 systems of human structure, labor, production or wealth have been built on, and are a breeding ground, for inequality and imbalance.
This has also produced a “memory” virus.
The purpose of the 12:60 ratio was to erase all memory of the proper earth ratio as well as the complementary relationship of feminine and masculine. In other words, to disconnect our minds and our hearts from the indigenous DNA. Along with the 12:60 ratio came the imposition of patriarchy from Europe/Mideast, where the Fatherland (the country, the patrias, where the word “patriot” comes from) became more important than the Motherland (the whole planet).
Still the genetic memory is with us, in our bones if not in our conscious. Tapping into this is the healing power to be balanced in this world despite the pervasive fracturing, imbalances and injustices of so-called civilization.
13:20 is the ratio of the proper relationship of feminine and masculine, needed for all birth and regeneration. This is what Ometeotl means (“Two Energy”). The Creator spirit. The Supreme Regenerating Principle of the Universe. 13 is feminine, 20 is masculine.
Therefore, Ometeotl is not a God to be worshipped, detached, personified, but a principle of all life to be respected, affirmed, honored, and lived by.
Knowing these laws/principles/ratios is turning necessity into mind. As Marxists say, freedom is the appreciation of necessity. You can only do what you want to do when you know what needs to be done.
The human experience as matter
What is called matter, the material conditions of our lives, comes from the word “mother.” Mother earth is our universal birthplace, recreated in a woman’s body, where spiritual beings become matter. As they say, we are spiritual beings on a human journey—not just human beings on a spiritual quest. It’s actually both—feminine and masculine.
This means not pitting one against the other. That leads to misalignment. But matter has finite qualities, laws of birth and development, limitations as well as dangers. Our journey then has a purpose—to learn the mastery of consequences. In matter, we learn how to breath, walk, think, act, do, impact, etc. We can go negative or positive—both are possible. We can eat healthy protein-rich mushrooms… or poisoned ones (and some of the most beautiful and appealing mushrooms can be the most poisonous).
We learn the consequences of our actions and inactions. We learn about the lures of the attractive and intoxicating (and their limitations) while also learning about the long-range, the qualitative, the slower gathering of depth knowledge. You don’t have to pose one against the other. They all matter (“mother” again).
Our bodies matter, although they are finite, needing care and healthy options. But there is a part of us that is infinite, eternal, abundant.
There is a way to tap into the abundant aspects of our natures. These are imagination and creativity, inexhaustible wells. The feminine energies account for these. The masculine energies account for our prudent, practical, step-by-measured-step plans, proposals and actions. Both are important, but again we often pit one against the other.
External nature is also both finite and generative, the latter becoming engaged when we work within the laws/principles of what allows natural things get born, grow, die, and get born again. There is abundance in nature as well — she teaches us this everyday.
Nature is our best and greatest university.
Our mother (matter) is therefore the greatest source of the masculine, yet also the place where the feminine acts out its power to go beyond the limits.
What I call attunement –- tuning into nature’s energies, powers, and to your own nature and of your relationships –- is re-aligning to the 13:20 operating ratio and to the proper relationships (harmony) of feminine and masculine. In life, like a good guitar, we have to get out of tune, imbalanced, off kilter. But with consciousness, learning, ritual, ceremony, and art, we can get tuned again, on a higher level each time. It’s aligning or tuning the six “strings” of our being — the spiritual, mental, emotional, psychological, creative, and physical.
In human/earth development, we have been out of tune for 520 years — we are in the beginning process of re-aligning, or we cease to evolve, which means we cease to exist. The point is evolution, unlike the narrow religious “believers” who claim otherwise (“believing” is not knowing), is “God’s” way, the way of nature, taking the form and content of evolution/revolution through new stages of growth. The spiracle process of all growth (called by modern scientists terms like “punctuated equilibrium,” “the negation of the negation,” the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” movement, etc.) is how indigenous people saw development. Not just linear, not just cyclical, but the combination of both (masculine and feminine) to create spirals. Again the DNA strand is a spiral, so is the Milky Way, vortexes, the development of new species.
Another way to look at this: Every day of our life is the same, a cycle development from the previous day, with variations of sun, moon, stars, elements, seasons, but pretty much what we should expect. But every new day is also something that has never happened before: nobody has ever walked on this particular space of earth, under this specific configuration of sun, moon or stars, etc. before.
Just like all humans go through a similar process of conception, gestation, and birth, growth, death, each human being born is also unique, specifically bound with particular combinations of fate and destiny, nature and nurture, environmental and internal factors, purpose and meaning.
Yes, other beings have populated the planet. Yes, we’ve been “here” before. But at the same time there has never been a person like you in this time, in this place, under these conditions. You are connected and at the same time singular, including with unique soul (attributes, propensities, destinies) and physical properties and imprints (fingerprints, voice patterns, face, etc.).
Birthdays and 13-year cycles
There are four cycles of 13 years before a person becomes 52. For the Mexika, each cycle is a time of re-calibration, a threshold time, when doors open, new possibilities emerge, and growth is qualitatively changed. Remember, 52 years is the big transformative time before the final cycle, when you prepare to enter the other side.
So, my son, on your 39th birthday: You are ending the third cycle, entering the fourth. This is a time of destiny-making, mature decisions, of fruitful endeavors, of achievement. The 3rd cycle is mostly a learning cycle, beginning after your brain became fully shaped and molded around age 26 (the end of second cycle). Pray for guidance, protection, but also inner strength. Don’t get off your path, but when you do just get back on. No more dramas. No more deep turmoil. Now a part of your soul settles in. Another part is ready to be seen, accomplished, in your destiny. It’s time to get tuned up again.
c/s